"No, young people are not irresponsible", refute, in a forum transmitted this Saturday, August 15 to Parisien-Today in France, about fifteen young people, students, agrégés, nurse, facade worker ... aged 22 to 27 years. Not wanting to put on the costume of the "scapegoat" in the face of Covid-19, they recall that "the youth has given its share to the current crisis" and "that it has complied with good grace to the rigors of confinement". "She has often sacrificed her year, her projects, her comfort, even her future, to preserve the most fragile", they emphasize. A reference to "interrupted studies, disrupted courses, compromised competition".
Nathanaël Travier, 26, who had the idea of this speech, refuses the idea of a homogeneous category where we would fit all under 30 years. Not all are in excess. Himself spent a week's vacation in the Cévennes, while about fifty kilometers away, a giant rave-party was taking place in Hures-la-Parade. “We were eight young people, isolated, trying to respect barrier gestures, without going to see the grandparents who were in the next house so as not to expose them. I have the impression that it is this attitude that dominates in our age group ”, assures this Parisian librarian.
"If there is a relaxation of vigilance, it is collective"
“Can we reproach young people with such vehemence for enjoying a summer under the conditions that the authorities themselves have defined […]. While, to save tourism rightly, travel has been authorized, even encouraged, should it remain cloistered? »We can still read in the gallery. "If there is relaxation of vigilance, it is collective," insists Nathanaël Travier, who did not hesitate to go to be tested when he was in doubt about a possible contamination. “This is called being responsible. Can all old people say the same? He tackles.
“Besides, perhaps we should ask ourselves the question of the differentiation of the health strategy according to age? He asks. Perhaps that would be part of the solution for him. “In the company where my brother works, who is a mason, to cope with the declining order book, the boss asked the oldest, and therefore more at risk, to stay at home, while the youngest continued to work and stayed on the front lines. In other words, rather than highlighting "the excesses of some", we can also promote "their solidarity". "We may need it to support the economy if the epidemic starts up again at the start of the school year," concludes Nathanaël Travier.
Tribune: "No, the youth is not irresponsible"
"The rebound of the coronavirus epidemic will have brought with it a new outbreak of an illness to which French youth are only too accustomed: there was obviously a need for a scapegoat, young people will do well. For a few days now, we have endured forums and interventions that condemn the youth, indulge in easy comments or pride themselves on reasoning, obviously forgetting that young people also read the newspapers and watch television. Allow us today an answer to us, young people who mostly blow out our first twenty-five candles and who, despite the diversity of our profiles and our functions, are these young people , so often considered responsible for the evils. Of our society.
Allow us, dear old folks , to begin by challenging the vocabulary: no more than you will appreciate the apostrophe, it is difficult for us to suffer this reduction under a formula bordering on amalgamation. What do you mean by young people ? Are these medical and nursing students or health professionals under the age of thirty, who, many in the emergency services, were on the front line during the bulk of the epidemic? Are they these young executives of the administration who, in cohort in the offices and the public services, devoted themselves with abnegation to their task to make the machine run? Is it this generation of cashiers, service personnel, industry and construction who put their energy at the service of collective life and the economy? During this crisis, as much the past as the one to come, young people were and will be in the front line at the service of society and the community, engaged in a common struggle where age distinctions no longer count. Were these young people irresponsible?
Allow us also to doubt the substance, to mitigate too easy a criticism. Youth have given their share to the current crisis. Many of us have seen our studies interrupted, their courses disrupted, their competitions compromised. Many of us, often the last to arrive in companies, have lost our jobs or have not signed the contracts we were promised. If young people inevitably share the responsibilities of a collective relaxation of vigilance, let us not forget that they are also the main victim of this crisis. The year ahead promises to be difficult for a generation which will be let loose in a seized labor market, which will pile up in saturated universities, which will approach these years of study or the beginning of their career in deep uncertainty.
Who will dare to say, today or in a few months, that we have deserved it ? It would be better today to recognize that in this crisis the youth were exemplary. Faced with a disease that hardly affected it directly - whatever one may say, the coronavirus has only marginal consequences on the youngest sections of the population: an (another) undeniable privilege of youth - it is 'is willingly bent to the rigors of confinement. She has often sacrificed her year, her projects, her comfort, even her future, to protect the most vulnerable in society. There is nothing that is normal here, but obviously when we call the youth to reason today, we forget that it was not necessary to do it when events required it. Also, can he be so vehemently reproached for enjoying a summer under the conditions that the authorities themselves have defined? While the bars are open again, should she do without? While, to save tourism with good reason, travel has been authorized, even encouraged, should it remain cloistered in the tiny apartments that are often rented to it by these elders who today crack down on morality? Moreover, the question of the duration and the severity of restrictions without differentiation is not illegitimate and will one day have to be asked.
Yes, a part of the young people undoubtedly benefit too happily from their summer in defiance of a necessary vigilance. But for a few thousand young people at Hures-la-Parade, others organized their holidays with the strictest vigilance, renouncing the pleasure of seeing their grandparents or their family, making sure to stay among young people and seeking isolation. that the current situation calls for. This part of our generation is the vast majority: it does not deserve criticism.
Too often, France experiences this kind of attack against its youth. We twenty-five year olds, nurses, teachers, masons, landscapers, public service and private sector executives, infinitely diverse, often reasonable, sometimes fickle - but which generation is not? -, we reject the convenient accusations which still strike us today. Régis Debray, one of those rare old people who has not forgotten youth, brilliantly showed in 2013, in Le bel age, the paradox of a society where youth is triumphant while, in this universe of seniors with prohibitive rents, With the candidacies simmered twenty years in advance, with the promotions long matured and with the locked supervisory boards, the young […] in reality atone . In this relationship with youth, there is something deeply embarrassing.
Crises, too often, make you unjust or ungrateful, and fear divides. However, a crisis can also give the opportunity to unite, to notice that we share a common future and a common project. We young people are today, as always, one with the whole of society. And tomorrow, when we too are old - because youth is not inevitable - we hope that we will remember this age with all the pride and dignity it deserves. "
The petitioners :
Solène Amice, associate professor of history; Arnaud Chaniac, agrégation in history; Mathurin Gaudin, employee; Pierrick Gaudin, student; Daniel Han, project manager; Tanguy Le Hir, show technician; Marion Messador, executive; Louis Poinsignon, student at Polytechnique; Jules Rostand, student; Natacha Saen, nurse; Arthur Simothé, landscape designer; Elie Speck , medical student; Augustin Travier, facade maker; Nathanaël Travier, librarian